


time held me green and dying

by brokendrums



Series: rising water [2]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Gen, Multi, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-06
Updated: 2017-09-06
Packaged: 2018-12-20 16:40:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11924943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokendrums/pseuds/brokendrums
Summary: Separated from Niall, Harry has to shoulder more responsibility during the war alone.





	time held me green and dying

**Author's Note:**

> My greatest thanks to [littlecather](http://archiveofourown.org/users/littlecather/pseuds/littlecather) for the read through and encouraging me to make Harry's life in this verse as painful as possible. 
> 
> This fic is set just before Christmas 1940 and is an additional piece to [alive in spite of rising water](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7717477). I would suggest that you read that first. 
> 
> Please read with a huge pinch of salt re: the historical accuracy of Harry being in France at this point.
> 
> **Warning:** This fic contains graphic depictions of injury and death corresponding to wartime conditions.

_Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,  
Time held me green and dying._

Dylan Thomas | Fern Hill 

Harry shivers, pulls the collar of his coat up around his chin. 

It’s fucking freezing. 

Breath plumes out in front of him, white and wispy. He watches it dissipate, breathes out again. It’s only distracting for a moment before it reminds him how cold he is. His mind numb, his arse numb, everything fucking numb. 

It’s nearly dawn, the sun creeping up on the horizon. It’s sort of grey -- that bleak light that’s only seen by those who should be asleep.

Harry keeps his eyes trained to the other side of the river, watching for any sign of movement. Everything is a pallid grey colour -- the dirty riverbank, the drab buildings that are bullet ridden and wrecked, the faded morning sky. It’s hard to imagine this place in happier times or somewhere someone would gladly visit. The image of France in his head is getting duller and duller as days go by. 

He could sleep -- he’ll be able to soon -- the cold digging into his bones sharper than if he wasn’t dead on his feet. Sleep comes fitfully now that Harry’s here on his own, exhaustion seeping into every muscle fibre and making everything feel heavy but his eyes remain open, his mind always ticking on somewhere in there. He’s only fully appreciating how hard it is to be out here on his own now, without Niall there to keep a watchful eye. 

Behind him, the first sounds of the regiment waking up can be heard. The march of feet, the metallic crunch of vehicles squelching through the muddied village. They are supposed to be as quiet as possible but it’s hard to keep a few hundred frustrated men silent in these conditions. It wouldn’t be the first time that Harry’s heading to bed as a brawl breaks out over breakfast. 

“Alright, Styles?” comes a voice behind him. Harry’s shoulder jerks but he’s too cold to properly jump. A CO back in Aldershot would say he’s getting complacent -- lazy the longer they sit like sitting ducks in a tiny village close to the border but Harry thinks it’s easy for them to say from their nice and warm barracks back in Blighty. 

Harry glances over his shoulder and sees Rylance grinning at him. Harry nods at him, uses the butt of his gun to push himself to his feet. 

“Better now I’ve seen you,” Harry promises him, letting Rylance take over his station. Mark laughs, settling down against the burnt stump of an old tree. They had covered this position yesterday in brambles and branches. It stinks of the river. When he was a child, he and Gemma used to pull brambles down to the pond and hide there all afternoon. They would roll home just in time for dinner smelling of honeysuckle, the hems of Harry’s trousers wet from paddling in the pond. It never smelt like this, never caught at the back of his throat. 

“Enjoy your nice quiet sleep,” Rylance tells him, waving him away. “I had young Whitehead jibbering away to me for half the night. I might join you tonight, instead. Get more sleep here in the cold.”

Harry presses his lips together, appreciates his easy going nature. It hadn’t been easy for Harry to join a new commanding after training so long with the others. He still feels a pang of regret that he’s not with them, not with the men he grew so close to in France the first time. Not with Niall. But most of the people are genial enough. 

Harmless in their complaining, fierce in their loyalty. 

“See you at scran,” Harry tells him, tramping back through the thicket towards the village. The lookout is just a precaution, a few men stationed every few metres or so. There was a night raid before Harry’s regiment got here, a few hundred good men killed for a measly few guns and machinery. 

These skirmishes are few and far between. They’re not there on an official capacity -- just keeping a lookout, Ben always says -- but Harry has the feeling that something’s brewing behind the front lines. More often than not, Ben disappears off to HQ and comes back, a calculating look in his eye as he appraises the unit. 

Harry just reminds himself he’s lucky so far. He’s not out in the sweltering heat of the Med or sands of the Middle East. He’s not being shot down from the sky over London. He’s just sitting by a tributary river night by night. 

He’s back to feeling useless. The days dragging futily by whilst Niall and the rest of the boys are getting killed off at other parts of the Front. 

Harry swallows down the bitterness in the back of his throat -- he doesn’t like starting the day with that attitude if he can help it. 

The residents of the village are mostly gone, only a few with no where else to go remain. Windows begin to open as the day warms up, thick air rising from the stinking river. Harry’s trudging through the only muddied road towards the centre of the village when someone approaches him. 

Harry tries to keep his face neutral. The man looks unkempt and tired. There’s something a little wild in his eyes as he jolts towards Harry, his feet sinking into the mud. He throws a furtive look over at the river and the other village before he lunges at Harry. 

“Pour toi,” the man says, ignoring the way Harry’s raised his arm defensively. He’s wearing a dirty apron, his face grizzled with a patchy beard. There’s spots where he’s worn away the hair worrying, the hair rubbed away with his own hands. 

He presses two crumpled croissants into Harry’s hand, still warm from the oven. 

Harry looks at him, tries to show how grateful he is in his expression. Supply lines have been thin on the ground, rationing coming down on tiny rural villages like this harshly. Harry’s seen lingerings of a black market but he turns a blind eye, he’s not bothered where the baker’s got his butter from.

“Merci,” Harry says, his accent sounding too English. The baker smiles, pats at his shoulder before he retreats back into his house, mumbling something quietly under his breath.

The residents who have remained are slowly starting to go mad. Their village ruined and turned into an army barracks. Their family disappeared or dead. Harry doesn’t blame them. 

He clutches the pastries to his chest and heads back. It’s still quiet enough at the HQ, only a few of the administrative staff floating around. 

HQ is falling apart, only half of the building with a roof. The doorway doesn’t have a door, just a cavernous hole that’s been made safe with a few pieces of timber. They haven’t had post in awhile, a few early risers standing disappointed as they ask for news from home. Harry suspects that the higher-ups are stopping the newspapers too. Some bullshit about morale, probably.

Harry settles on a low, crumbling wall to the side. The bricks have been pulled apart and repurposed. Sandbags sit at the base, useless. It used to be the school, Harry thinks. There was no point in trying to save it -- there’s no children here anymore. 

Harry thanks God for small mercies. 

He’s only sitting for a few moments before he feels something at his ankles. He reaches down, lets his fingers brush over the dirty fur of a stray cat. 

“Hello,” he says gently, pretending it’s Meredith or Olivia. She’s dirty, her fur dark but she’s still warm as he presses his palm to her back. The cat noses at his ankles and then his knee. Harry pulls the edge of a croissant off and feeds it to her. 

He feels a bit shit doing this, petting her head and watching to see if she’s going to be sick. All the trust in Harry has dissipated, been slowly chipped away the longer he’s away from home. He trusts the men in his regiment with his life but can’t help feel defensive around anyone else. 

It wouldn’t be the first time a scared, vulnerable baker slipped some poison into their bread. 

The cat doesn’t seem to mind though, nosing for more. Harry snorts, feeds it a little corner and patting its head. He shoves the rest of it into his mouth whole. It’s still a little warm, the pastry melting in his mouth. 

He’d never had a croissant before he came to London. Taylor seemed so worldly compared to him and he always felt like he was rushing to catch up, to pretend that he was more experienced than he really was. She’s show him fancy coffee houses, smoke cigarettes with him at the corner of streets and pull him into the middle of dance floors in tiny little dance clubs she had heard about on the grapevine. 

It was startling when they met Niall, to be the more experienced one for once. 

Harry sighs, pulling the second croissant apart with greasy fingers. He should save it for when he doesn’t have anything else but he can’t help folding the pastry into his mouth. 

When he closes his eyes, he can nearly imagine he’s back in London. Niall appearing at the doorway of their bedroom a little pink cheeked from walking home so fast and Taylor’s sprawled across his lap as they lie in their sun dappled bed waiting on him. 

“Confessed your sins?” Harry would ask and Niall would smile, looking a little embarrassed about his weekly trips to mass. 

“I brought breakfast,” Niall dodged the question, dropping a bag of pastries on the bed, the butter seeping out through the paper bag until it was nearly see-through. Harry always enjoyed licking the butter from his jaw, down over his collarbone, across his hips where their greasy fingers took their time undressing him again. 

Sundays could be spent in bed with no one bothering them. Only the three of them for each others amusement. 

Harry swallows the last of his croissant and drags a pencil out of his pocket and a piece of crumpled paper. 

He tries not to think of home too much. Tries not to dwell of their time together Before. He’s not supposed to be writing to them but he can’t help it. He doesn’t have much to say -- can hardly tell Taylor all about how grim it is -- so he settles on scrawling a little note to Taylor with thinly veiled cryptic queries about Niall.

He’s making his way to the billets when Winston finds him. 

“H,” he says, clapping a hand on his shoulder. Harry’s knees nearly buckle but he manages to stay on his feet. “This is Thomas, he’s just been transferred over. Show him the ropes, will you?”

“The ropes?” Harry asks with a dry laugh. 

Ben’s teeth flash. “Don’t let him get killed on his first day, eh?”

“Aye, aye Captain,” Harry says, raises his hand in a salute. 

Ben snorts, knocks his knuckles against Harry’s helmet. “Get some sleep. Sarcasm doesn’t suit you.”

Thomas looks a little green around the edges, his smile tentative as he stands in front of Harry. He must be new, his uniform crisp and clean, not faded around the shoulders and elbows from wear. They’re probably the same age but he looks young, his face open and vulnerable. Not weathered yet. He keeps looking wide-eyed around the barracks, shocked at how wrecked everything is. 

“You tired?”

Thomas glances up at the morning sky, his gaze faltering slightly on Harry’s chevrons on his shoulder. 

“It’s morning,” he says, a little unsure. “Sir.”

Harry grins, his smile feeling worn and unfamiliar on his face. He pats Thomas on the shoulder and nudges him in the direction of the billet. “First rule. Take sleep when it’s offered.”

Thomas does what he’s told and it makes Harry’s inside melt with sudden affection for him. He seems sweet, his hair as light as Niall’s in the sun. 

“Isn’t this someone’s bed?” Thomas asks naively when Harry sets him up in a cot nearby. Harry’s expression doesn’t change -- he doesn’t feel pity very often now -- and it only takes a few moments for the shock to register on Thomas’s face. “Oh,” he says very softly. 

Harry pats him on the side of the shoulder again and drops onto his bed. It’s warm -- someone must have slept in it last night too -- and lies back. It feels good to stretch out, his muscles draining tension as he takes a few big deep breaths. He doesn’t bother taking off his shoes or his coat. 

He’s asleep in seconds.

*

When Harry’s woken, a tense hand on his shoulder and Ben’s face a few inches above it, Harry reckons he’d had about two hours sleep. 

He feels groggier than before, his body unco-ordinated as he kicks off the thin scratchy blanket and pulls himself to the edge of the cot. Sometimes, he thinks it would be better if he could do it all without sleep. Running on bitter coffee and maybe a hit of benzedrine. Something to stop him feeling like there’s cotton wool in his ears. 

He runs his hands through his dirty hair, tries to get himself moving. 

Ben waits for him, his face a picture of calm but Harry can tell with the way he’s standing hunched over, his shoulders by his ears that he’s impatient. 

“Spit it out,” Harry says, watching as Ben’s eyes dart to him. 

Behind him, Tom lets out a little gasp and Harry knows he’s awake. Poor bastard probably didn’t even sleep. Harry shouldn’t really be speaking to a superior like this but Ben’s mouth twists up into a semblance of a smile. 

“Oh, I’m so glad you’ll be extra surly on this trip,” Ben remarks and Harry blinks a bit, shakes himself more awake. 

“What trip?”

Ben looks at him gravely and Harry can tell that all joking is aside now. “A little reconnaissance mission. Just to the other side of the river to see what they’re up to.”

“Oh,” Harry says sarcastically. “A little pleasure trip down to the marina, is it?”

Ben’s mouth thins. “Picnic by the water. We’ll rent a pedalo.”

Harry gets to his feet, stretches his arms over his head. Ben claps him on the back, right between his shoulder blades. Harry feels sore all over, every joint in his body crying out for a night on a proper bed. Even their lumpy old mattress back in London would do him the world of good. 

Tom stands when Harry turns round. He’s still a little pale, his hair sticking up roughly on one side. Harry can envision him lying rigid as a board on the bed next to him waiting for Harry to wake up again. 

Harry sighs. “If you really aren’t going to sleep, you need to go make yourself useful.”

Tom looks chastised and then, after a moment of biting his lip, he says, “Just following your orders, sir.”

Ben snorts, clamps his hand over Harry’s shoulder to wheel him away from the beds.

“You’re turning him into a cheeky little blighter already,” Ben says to him. Then over his shoulder, “With us, Private. We need another set of hands, anyway.”

Tom scrambles after them, shoving his feet into his boots. Harry feels Ben’s shoulder tense as they’re forced to wait for him to lace them up. Time seems to tick on, Ben’s hand feeling heavier and heavier on Harry’s shoulder. 

Harry catches Tom’s elbow as they come to the mouth of the billet, Ben bending his head against the rain as he heads for the other tent ahead of them. “Only take your boots off if they’re letting in water and you’ve got a nice new pair waiting for you.”

Tom blinks, a blush rising in his cheeks. He nods, turning his head to watch where Ben’s already disappearing through a flap of canvas. Harry hates telling people what to do, hates pointing out where people have made the wrong move. 

“You’ll catch on. I learned the hard way,” Harry tells him, trying to soften it a little. He’s been there before, something as inconsequential as kicking your boots off not feeling like that big a deal. He can see remember Niall’s face when he woke up one morning to his boots being stolen from under his arse. He’d never seen Niall so fucked off before that but he’d seen it plenty since.

Lunch is a busy affair. They’re a small unit -- the full force of the army still in England waiting or in the Med. Most of the fighting has taken to the air, Harry tries not to listen too hard to the news of the battle in the skies, of the indiscriminate bombing of home -- but they’re edging round the border, their supplies limited and blocked. They shouldn’t be here, really. Harry doesn’t have a clue _why_ they are when they can very rarely help any of the occupied places they surround. 

Harry sits opposite Ben, drags Tom down beside him. It’s some sort of stew, Harry doesn’t question it. It’s hot. It’ll do. His mouth is full, his arm spooning stew into it before he even has chance to swallow. Ben watches him, slightly disbelieving. The lads at chow time is hardly polite society so Harry ignores him. 

“Bread!” Harry crows in delight, tearing a chunk off the loaf that’s being passed down the table. They haven’t had such a luxury in a week or two. He tears a chunk off for Tom and passes it on, the soldier next to him snatching it off him.

“You’re worse than a child,” Ben tells him, his tone serious. 

Harry grins at him, opening his mouth so Ben can see how much bread he has jammed between his jaws. Ben shakes his head and dunks his bread into his stew. 

“So this reconnaissance,” Harry inquires, watching Ben hang over his tin. 

Ben raises an eyebrow and glances around. There’s loud chatter on either side of them but dinnertime isn’t really the time nor the place for this kind of conversation. 

In this light, Ben looks particularly tired. His cheekbones are sticking out more than usual, his lips cracked as he runs his tongue over them. Stress radiates off him, his knuckles white around his spoon. Harry always thought that the higher-ups had a better time of it -- no night time missions, a bed under a proper roof up at HQ -- but Harry’s reconsidering it with how weighted Ben’s shoulders look. 

“Going to the loo,” Tom announces, glancing around at Harry as if he needs his permission. Harry shrugs at him, watching as his face goes a little queasy. In comparison to the rest of the troops around them, Harry notices how clean his uniform is, how coiffed his hair. He doesn’t look weathered yet like the rest of them. 

Ben laughs, pointing his finger at him. “You’ll get used to the runs too. They’re a permanent feature of river life.”

Harry nods in agreement. His arse hasn’t been this sore since he was last in London. And that was for a decidedly nicer reason.

Tom grimaces and climbs off the bench. It’s only a matter of seconds before someone else is squeezing into his spot. 

Ben kicks his shin as soon as he’s gone. Harry snaps his head up, spoon frozen on the edge of his tin. “What?”

“You’re doing a pretty shit job at teaching him the ropes,” Ben chastises him. 

Harry frowns. “He’s been here all of two hours. I’m easing him in.”

Ben shakes his head and actually looks a little bit disappointed. “Do you think there’s time for easing in? He’s about to go on a mission --”

“Well, don’t take him then,” Harry mutters. 

Ben kicks him in the shin again. 

“Fuck,” Harry groans, reaching down to rub at his leg through his thick trousers. His fingers slide in the mud spattered there from Ben’s boot. “I have enough ailments without you out to hurt me too.” 

“You have to prepare these soldiers, Harry,” Ben’s telling him, his voice low. 

“Why?” Harry asks him. “I never asked to be in charge. And I’m _not_. You’re the one that’s in charge.”

“Because for whatever reason, you’ve came to me with a field promotion. You’re on the up, whether you like it or not.”

Ben glares at him. Harry’s been struggling to come to terms with this since England. He had left Taylor and Niall behind him and went straight into extra training in a camp down near the Dorset coast whilst Niall had went up north to Glasgow. It had taken him ages to even respond to the new title, the COs making him run extra drills every time he ignored them. 

“I never --”

“Asked for it,” Ben snaps, his face tensing. Harry knows he’s just nervous about the mission. They’ve been sitting stagnant for a few days now, this will be the first proper attempt at anything covert. The entire unit is restless, Harry can feel the swell of it in the air. 

Harry prefers restless. It means less of them are getting injured. 

Ben looks morosely down at his tin. “I know. You’ve said. Well, I didn’t exactly ask to be here knee deep in shit with you either but here we are. You need to command the men better.”

Harry grits his teeth. As much as he can joke about with Ben, he knows when to pick his moments. Ben’s good at deciding when he’s back to being the boss. Harry could emulate him if he tried hard enough. 

But Harry’s never been able to tell people what to do. It used to send his mum round the bend.

“You’re the man of the house, now,” she’d say to him, her hair in ringlets round her chin. She’d barge into his bedroom in the morning in her dressing gown, Harry rolling over so she wouldn’t see how hard he was from dreaming about the lad who worked in the stables. “You have to tell the men how to do it properly.”

It was always the same -- do it properly, stop wasting so much, do this, do that, tell them they weren’t needed anymore because Harry’s mum couldn’t afford help around the house. 

It was awful -- Harry stammering through an apology to the likes of Mr Lowden who had tended to their gardens since Harry was a child. The youngest Lowden boy was in school in the village but Harry’d seen that he’d been put to service the next September just before he left for London. Jack wouldn't speak to him, turning the other way whenever Harry tried to say hello. 

It had made him feel guilty, all that responsibility and all that money. He couldn’t look at people in the eye when he had to speak to them like that. 

It made him feel awkward. He was much happier ending everything with a playful smile and a cheery pat on the back. 

Ben does it so well. Harry watches as he stands up, reaching across the table for the last of the bread. There’s a protest but Ben matches it with a stern glare and the hand falls away. 

Anyway, Harry won’t need to learn. There’s no way he’ll get another promotion, not with Ben there.

“Eat up,” Ben says, tearing the bread in half and giving the rest to Harry. Being mates with a superior has its perks. “We’re going to need our strength if it all goes to a ball of chalk.”

*

They go at dusk. 

Ben’s recruited Rylance, Whitehead and a green looking soldier from the other regiment. He looks a bit shifty, a bulky bag on his back as they slide down the embankment towards the river. 

It smells a bit fresher because of the rain but the river is still as dirty as ever. The six of them climb into a little boat, Harry staying tucked down low. 

Tom grabs an oar, his elbow brushing against Harry’s every time he pulls back on the stroke. 

“Making myself useful,” he whispers when Harry sends him an enquiring look. “Know my way around a boat.”

Ben raises his eyebrow and Harry sees the recognition in it. Tom pulls back on the oar again, his shoulder hunched over so he can still keep as low as possible. 

If that was him, Ben would’ve said something by now. Something encouraging. Harry’s mouth is too dry with adrenaline so he licks his teeth for a moment before he can speak. 

“Good lad,” Harry mutters, clapping his hand on Tom’s rounded back. 

Tom smiles to himself, a little ruefully and pulls on the oar again. 

It doesn’t take too long to cross the river, the water rocking the boat unevenly as the six of them try to stay as low as possible. It bumps against the edge on the other side, Harry’s teeth knocking together. 

He hadn’t realised how tense he was, his muscles locked together so tight that there’s a dull ache when he gets to his feet again. 

“Okay,” Ben says, his voice very calm. It’s as if everything narrows down to what he says -- the rock of the boat against the embankment, the heavy breathing of the boys either side of him, the faint drizzle of rain falling on their faces. “There’s an eighty-eight down behind that barn --”

Harry glances over Ben’s shoulder and sees the structure of the barn looming in the distance. 

“I thought we were --” Harry starts to ask, confused as to what they’re supposed to be doing. 

“Richards here,” Ben points to the twitchy boy. “Is going to decommission it. We’re going to give him cover and he’ll set the explosives.”

Harry feels a bit cheated. He doesn’t know why everything has to be so fucking secretive. How long have they been living across the river from a fucking eighty-eight? “Why didn’t you tell us this was what we were doing?”

Ben glares at him. “Because I didn’t have to. Strictly need to know.”

Harry huffs out a breath. Knowing about it before crossing the river probably wouldn’t have made much difference but he feels guilty for not preparing Tom more. He glances over at him, sees his determined expression under the cover of darkness. He’s sweaty after rowing, his hands curled protectively into loose fists. Whitehead looks slightly panicked beside him. Rylance just looks resigned, his face impassive. Harry never knows when he’s actually angry at something, him being so kind and unassuming all the time. 

They crouch down below a building, the six of them pressing back against the wall. Harry tips his head back, his helmet scratching on the exposed brick. His palms are sweaty around his rifle, the metal sticking to his skin. He squeezes it, pretends his hands aren’t trembling quite so much. 

He feels nervous. His stomach in knots. That feeling you get when you’re playing hide and seek and you don’t want to be found first. They used to play in the garden as children, in amongst the trees. When he was older, Jack would take him down behind the cottages and Harry would press against a peeling brick wall, his stomach jumping from excitement. Jack would catch him with a kiss. 

Here, if he’s caught. It’ll be a bullet through his skull. 

The water smells worse this side of the river -- or at least Harry notices in more. Like squalor. Like someone’s shit themselves. 

Harry has to open his mouth to breathe. 

The rain during the day has cleared the clouds so it’s quite bright, the moon rising up high in the sky. He can see the stars. It reminds him of home, of staying up too late and coming home in the hushed quiet. Of lingering in the darkness with his head tipped back. 

Sometimes he finds it terrifying that these are the same stars everywhere. That across the Channel, Taylor is looking at the same moon. Maybe she’s only coming home from work or she’s putting the cat out. Maybe she hardly notices it at all, taking a bath by the fire and going to bed in their little house all alone. 

Harry doesn’t know if Niall will be looking at the stars tonight. Doesn’t know if he’s still alive to see them. Harry takes another breath, his heart thundering in his chest. There’s a lump in his throat and he could be sick, his stomach turning with the rush of adrenaline. 

He should write to him, fuck their self-made rules to only write to Taylor. He could pretend he’s his cousin, send him his love. Write in such a way that Niall would see through the guise and know exactly what he was thinking. How scared he is. How frustrated. How it feels like there’s something empty inside him now. It would be easy to tell him all this, because he knows that Niall’d be thinking it too. 

Harry flexes his fingers around the length of rifle. There’s no use. Every time he puts pencil to paper his mind goes blank. He can’t even thrum up enough energy to write about the horrors they’re seeing like some sort of lauded battle poet. 

Richards and Whitehead shuffle out from their little group. The street is deserted, all the houses in darkness. This side of the river, the village isn’t as devastated. The backs of the houses on the river are riddled with bulletholes but most of them are still standing, roofs haven’t buckled yet, homes haven’t been pulled apart, brick by brick. 

Not yet. 

Rylance is the picture of calm beside him, his breathing smooth and even. It makes Harry’s disjointed breaths sound louder, his mouth drying out with how he’s breathing with it open. Tom stays close to him, his mouth turned down. 

Harry knows it’s gone wrong before it really even starts. Ben’s crouched on the ground in front of him, his gun cocked and ready. Harry’s keeping an eye on behind them, scouring the edge of the river for an attack on their rear. His thighs are starting to burn from the way he’s squatting, lactic acid searing through his muscles.

A shot rings out, a crack in the air. Harry whips his head round, watches as Richards calls out and stumbles, his arm flung out. 

He crumples to the ground, his bag caught under his chest. Whitehead seems to still for a moment before he’s ducking and wrenching the bag out from under him. There’s another shot, a bullet ripping into the soft ground near Richard’s feet. 

“Richards.” 

They can hear Whitehead from here, hissing Richards’ name and then a soft grunt of effort and he’s tossing the bag towards the barn, Richards limp by his side. 

Beside him, Ben takes in a sharp breath. “Fuck,” he whispers. “Get back to the boat. Retreat.”

Harry feels Ben’s fingers in his collar pulling him back from the corner of the building. Just beyond it, in the near dark, Harry can see a flare of red. 

“He’s gonna blow,” Harry says hoarsely, shoving at Ben to move faster. 

They run, heads bent down low. The explosion is much bigger than Harry expected, the sound roaring in his ears as Harry’s flung forward. 

“Fuck!” Ben yelps, crawling forward. They’re out in the open, forced by the blast out from the cover of the houses. 

Whitehead calls out and over his shoulder, Harry can see him sprinting towards them. 

Harry scrambles to his feet, his fingers rubbing rawly on the ground. He curls his hand in Ben’s jacket, pulls him up until his feet catch under him and they push towards the bushes. Harry’s heart is thundering in his chest. He hopes that that the fire covers them, doesn’t draw more attention to their escape. 

“Where’s the boat?” Ben hisses as they stagger through the undergrowth. Harry looks up across the river, his hand curled in the back of Tom’s coat and sees the silhouette of the baker’s house. They’re definitely at the right spot. 

Tom looks back over his shoulder at Harry, his expression terrified. Rylance is staring at the ground, his chest pressed low. 

The first bullet catches on a tree, the bark splintering near Harry’s ear. He barks out a yell, dives onto the ground. He catches Tom about the waist, pushing him into the mud. He’s shaking, his shoulders jerking but Harry doesn’t let him up. 

Harry’s not even sure how to describe sniper fire. His heart is always beating too fast, a rush of blood through his ears for him to catch the sound of it. It’s quick, a sharp fwomp of something speeding too fast past your ear. 

It’s easier to describe where it lands. The thick sound of burning hot metal embedding itself in muscle, the shatter of bone, the hiss of squirting blood. 

The third bullet makes its target. Ben grunts, low and animal like, then a wet gasp of breath. 

“No no no,” Rylance chants, rolling towards him. “Winston!”

Harry pushes himself over Tom’s body, uses his feet to propel himself forward. His front is waterlogged and mud soaked but Ben’s is seeping with blood. 

“Winston,” Harry mutters, his hands scrambling to touch him. “Ben.” His skin feels so warm, Harry’s hands skating over the blood that’s washed up over his neck and jaw, down over his chest. 

Ben gasps, his hands flinging up in jerking motions. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, his eyes gone wild and terrified. It’s hard to tell where he’s been shot, blood seeming to be everywhere. Harry pats his palms over him. He doesn’t know how to make him feel better. 

“We have to take cover, Harry,” Rylance is telling him, a hand rising up to grip at Harry’s bicep. “Come on. He’s gone. We’ve got to go.”

“He’s not gone,” Harry says helplessly. Ben’s still staring at him, his expression frantic. He takes another gurgling breath. A bubble of blood appears at his lip, dark dark red. It rolls down his cheek like a teardrop into his ear. Harry’s hands pull at his collar, brush over the bullet hole. The skin has been scorched off, a hole blown in the middle of his neck. It’s pink and red and so wet. 

Harry makes a noise of despair, plugs his hand into the hole in his neck, blood oozing hot over his fingers. The inside of Ben’s neck is slippery and too hot. It feels too strange to think of his finger deep inside him like this. 

“No, Ben. Ben, please,” Harry murmurs, his voice rough and raw. He looks down at his neck again, sees where he’s swallowing. It sounds too wet, Ben choking on every breath. 

“Harry,” Rylance tries again. Harry glances up at him and then away. He’s aware of another bullet pinging into the water in front of them. Rylance is right, they have to take cover. He’s three other men to think of now, three men in his care. 

Ben’s breathing has turned ragged, his fingers clutching at Harry’s arms. His dirty nails dig into Harry’s skin, desperately as he grasps for something. 

“I’m sorry,” Harry tells him. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

He unplugs his finger, more blood spurting out. Ben’s turned so pale and grey, his eyes the only thing that has any colour on his face except for the rivulets of blood disappearing into his hair. His helmet has been knocked off, his hair dirty and matted and sticking up shockingly dark compared to his skin. 

Rylance clutches at his arm, half tows him backwards. They trip over Tom, his face still buried in his arms. He looks dead too but Rylance hauls him up, the three of them scrambling to their feet to escape the sniper bullets. 

Harry can’t take his eyes off Ben as his whole body jerks in shock. They leave him there and duck behind a wall. Whitehead’s already there, his face stricken. Tom’s moaning into Rylance’s arm, Rylance trying to shut him up. Harry can hardly breathe, his chest tight. 

His hands are covered in blood, he smears it over his forehead when he reaches up to secure his helmet on properly. It smells of copper and earth, smells of death. 

It only takes Ben a few minutes to die but Harry’s never lived through longer ones. They can hear the gasps and gurgles of him, unnatural in the still night air. Harry takes a shaky breath every time Ben draws one, counts as they grow further and further apart. 

He’ll have to write home to the family. Harry shuts his eyes, knows that there’s a little girl back in England that’s lost a father. In that moment, Harry’s glad he doesn’t have children. He can’t imagine leaving one behind with Taylor, a baby that will never know how much Harry would have loved it. 

He swallows down the sudden urge to cry. At least, if it happens Taylor will understand, will have Niall there to comfort her. A child doesn’t understand the perils of war. 

“Harry,” Rylance says, his hand warm on Harry’s bicep. Harry opens his eyes, blinks through blurry tears. “Take a breath.”

Harry sucks in air, listens to himself gasp for it. 

The riverbank is silent. 

* 

The roaring fire on the far edge of the village sheds enough light across the buildings that they manage to find a little outbuilding that’s empty. Rylance leads them through the door, the building no bigger than an old shed. The door opens into a lane into the village, the river to the back of the building. It’s not ideal but it’ll do. 

Harry pushes Tom up the stone step and into the corner. The ground is a little uneven and they stumble, hands reaching to steady themselves on the crumbling brickwork. Whitehead follows, tucking himself tight into the opposite corner and Harry fits himself between them, his gun cocked and ready on his knee. 

It’s dark and cramped. There’s only a slit in the brick near the top of the wall, just tall enough to fit a hand through but it lets in very little breeze, the room humid and stuffy. They keep the door shut, Rylance sitting with his back up against it. 

Harry strikes a match, Tom jerking beside him at the shock of it. Whitehead curls further into the wall, only his dirty ear visible.

Rylance meets his gaze with a serious expression. 

“We’ll have to wait until morning,” Harry whispers to him. “Find the boat. They’ll realise we’re missing across the water.”

Rylance glances up, his face gaunt in the flickering shadows. “Is that a plan or a question?” he asks, bluntly. 

Tom stiffens against Harry’s side. Harry stares at Rylance, trying to think of a response. His voice will waver if he tries to speak again, his body giving away how terrified he is. 

The match burns down to Harry’s fingers. Harry jerks and drops it, the little light extinguishing. 

“We’ll take shifts to sleep,” Harry says, trying to sound commanding. 

These are his men now. His responsibility. 

He knows that Mark is still staring at him and Harry wilts back against the wall, glad that it’s too dark to make out his expression. Maybe Rylance has a better plan, a more experienced one. Rylance had been in the Great War, a young lad unfortunate enough to be drafted for the last year or so. Harry can’t shake the feeling of being too young when he’s telling him what to do. He _wishes_ that Rylance would just take over. Take all the responsibility off Harry’s shoulders.

Niall would know what to do, he was always better at taking over in a crisis when Harry couldn’t think straight. Or worse -- when he was the one creating the crisis. 

It doesn’t matter if they take shifts or not, Harry’s sure none of them sleep a wink. Harry listens to everything outside -- the hiss of the fire, the crack of the odd bullet. 

Dawn comes with little fanfare, an eery silence outside the four walls of the building they’re hiding in and the slow creeping of a square of light against the opposite wall from the window. 

Tom’s curled up beside him, his shoulder rising and falling rhythmically.

He’s maybe the only one who gets some sleep, his eyelids fluttering open when Harry shifts beside him.

“Are you alright?” Harry whispers, catching how green he looks. They’re all dirty and worn looking, pale under the layer of grime and mud but Tom looks ill, his eyes sunken into his face. 

“Yes,” he says through clenched teeth. Saliva bubbles out from the side of his mouth and Harry holds his cheek in his hand, feels the heat radiating off him. 

“Tom?” he asks, rolling into a crouch beside him. 

Rylance is watching from his spot by the door, his expression exhausted. Whitehead’s shoulders are too tense to be asleep. 

“My leg,” Tom finally concedes, his teeth pressed together. Harry can hear the grind of them as he rolls onto his back, his body nearly taking up what’s left of the floorspace. His right leg is held awkwardly, his left splaying out properly. He clenches his fingers in the wool of his trousers, up high near his thigh and grunts when he uses it as leverage to lift his knee. 

“Stop it,” Harry tells him, moving to kneel by his hip. Tom drops his head back against the cold floor where Harry had just been sitting, his eyes squeezing shut. 

He hisses when Harry pulls at his trousers. Under the caked mud, there’s a hole in the wool. 

“You’ve been hit,” Harry says, feeling very much like it’s someone else speaking for him. He pulls at the dirty trousers, heavy with mud and river water and blood. It’s a graze, a bullet just nicking his thigh. It takes Harry a few minutes to find it under the congealed blood and mud stuck to Tom’s thigh hair. 

“Why didn’t you say?” Rylance asks, his voice low and disbelieving.

Tom stares up, his eyes milky white and not quite focused. “Didn’t want to cause a fuss. We had enough to worry about.”

Rylance makes a noise of disapproval and crawls across to kneel beside Harry. Together, they tear at his trousers, the seam coming away under the strength of two men. The colour difference between his thighs is frightening. Harry can only see the inside of his other leg, his dick and balls held away in a pair of off-white army underwear. His skin is pale, gradually turning an ugly purpling and angry red colour. He can see the vessels under his skin, fighting hard against the puckered flesh. 

“Is the bullet definitely out?” Rylance asks, his eyes widening at the state of his leg. 

“Yes,” Tom begs. “It’s not there.”

Rylance looks at Harry and Harry swallows against the bile rising in his throat. It doesn’t look deep enough to have a proper bullet in it but he’s seen what happens when shrapnel is left behind. 

“We have to check,” Harry says, finally making a decision. Tom starts to protest and Harry looks up, Whitehead’s watching them, his face vacant. 

“Hold his shoulders,” Harry tells him and Tom’s voice grows louder. 

Harry presses his hand to Tom’s mouth to keep him quiet, apologising to him under his breath. Tom’s eyes grow wide and frantic. Harry looks down at his dirty fingers in the dim light. They’re stained brown with blood, all of it worn into the grooves of his fingertips, the wrinkles in his hands. It’s down his wrist and on the cuff of his jacket. 

Tom jerks under him, his mouth opening to grunt against Harry’s palm. His knee comes up as if to brace himself against the sting where Rylance’s fingers are searching for a bullet in his leg. Whitehead scrambles forward, his hands pressing against Tom’s shoulders. Harry sees where they’re blackened with soot and oil. His fingernails digging into Tom’s coat. 

“Ssh,” Harry soothes, his other hand coming up to his sweaty forehead. He pushes some of his hair away, gathering the dampness in his dirty palm. Tears gather in the corner of Tom’s eyes, slipping down over his dirty cheeks. 

Rylance’s hands come away bloody but empty. Tom’s breathing hard, catching at the back of his throat. His mouth is red when Harry takes his hand away, smeared with dirt. Whitehead falls back into the corner, looking gaunt. 

They make do with a little antiseptic from Rylance’s kit and the corner of his coat. Tom’s trouser legs gape open but he doesn’t seem to notice as he presses himself back against the wall of the room, his hands clamped around the top of his leg to stop it from moving too much. 

Harry closes his eyes, tries to listen beyond the four walls of their little shed. It seems quiet. Tom’s still breathing shallowly beside him and Whitehead is fidgeting, his leg tapping nervously against the ground. 

They’re thoroughly unprepared for a long stay where they’re stuck, hardly any water between them, barely any food. They’ve no more medical supplies and have two guns between the four of them. 

Tom shudders, curls closer to Harry. Harry slings his arm over his shoulder, looks down at his dirty blond hair.

“Am I going to be okay?” he asks, his voice hoarse. 

Harry smiles, lets his fingers trail to his give him a reassuring pat on the cheek. “Of course you are.”

He says it like he believes it himself. Tom nods, his eyes fluttering closed. 

Harry swallows the lump in his throat and looks away. 

*

Harry dreams of home. 

Not his house in London with it’s wonky door and net curtains. Not the way that one of the kitchen chair wobbles when he sits on it or the squeak of the bedsprings under the weight of three bodies. 

He dreams of the whitewashed house in the country, of the poplar trees that hang over the driveway. Of sitting outside in the garden with Gemma, of reading on the bottom step, of his mother’s powdery perfume as she hugged him good morning. 

They’d have eggs for breakfast from the farm next door, fresh oranges and apples. His mother would make tea in her grandmother’s china and tell him of how when she was a child, she had a cook to do this. 

He doesn’t dream of _pip, squeak and Wilfred_ kept in the jewellry box in her bedroom, of the faded sepia photograph of the man in the hallway that Harry didn’t recognise until he put on his own uniform and looked in the mirror. He doesn’t dream of Gemma wanting to go off to school and their mother having to say no because they couldn’t afford it. 

He wakes up hungry for it. Hungry for eggs and jam and decent tea. Hungry for childish innocence and soft secure arms around him to wake him up. Hungry for idyllic boredom and time whiled away with his imagination.

Instead, he wakes up to Mark shaking him, his face gaunt with lack of sleep. “You’re talking again.”

Harry shifts, his shoulder coming up against the crumbling plaster of the wall. “Sorry.” 

Mark grunts, settles back against the opposite wall. 

Whitehead is curled in the corner, his face closed off in sleep. Tom’s beside him, his shoulder shaking as he shivers. 

Harry watches him for a moment, in dazed fascination. The little room is nearly warm, their combined body heat making the damp feel humid. 

He crawls over, his bruised knees aching on the hard floor. 

Like this, his army regulation collar tugged up over his neck and his dirty blond hair sticking up roughly at the back where it’s started to grow back in tufts, he nearly looks like Niall. 

It reminds him of finding Niall curled on wooden pallets and under creaking church pews the last time they were in France. His jacket pulled off at some point during the night to put over Harry as he slept a few feet away. It was only a couple of months but it feels like a lifetime ago. 

Niall had became hardened, some of the brightness that Harry had taken for granted ebbing away into a permanent frown, a permanent hand at Harry’s elbow, a permanent worry for their safety. He took over the looking after part for a while, stubborn in letting Harry have his coat when it was chilly and sharing his rations when Harry ran out of his. 

Harry knew why he was there. He understood what Niall was giving up to do it. 

So he tried to give back what Niall didn’t realise he needed. He’d make him smile, he’d try and make him laugh. Once or twice, he’d whisper how much he loved him. 

He’d be filled with the same paralysing panic that he’d seen in Niall’s eyes when he had to approach a still body, his hand shaking as he rolled him over to find Niall just merely sleeping. 

His hand shakes now, his broken fingernails catching on the seam of Tom’s coat. His teeth are clenched when Harry rolls him, his eyes open and glassy. 

“Are you alright?” Harry whispers, his voice too shaky to be much else. 

Tom nods, his lips pressing together. They fade out, red to pink to white, until his mouth is just a thin line across the bottom half of his ashen face. 

His eyes bore into Harry’s. They’re blue but Harry can’t remember if they match Niall’s or not. It’s been so long since he’s seen him. They’ll do, though. He could block the rest of him out and just imagine Niall. 

He aches for him. Aches for home. For somewhere safe. 

“Do you want something to eat?” Harry asks instead, pulling out his emergency ration. There’s not much left -- a square of chocolate, a flat, soft biscuit. Tea if they had water. 

He shakes his head, his forehead creasing. He’s shaking -- shivering. Harry has a sticky sweat gathering at the back of his neck. He wrestles his coat off his shoulders, throws it over Tom’s chest. 

“Good lad,” Harry tells him, watching as Tom’s eyelids flutter sluggishly. “Save it for when you really need it. That’s what they say to do isn’t it?”

Rylance’s watching them from across the dim room. He gives Harry a flat, open look. 

It doesn’t look good. 

“We need to see if we can make it back across,” Rylance says quietly. Tom’s still shivering and Harry doesn’t know if he’s listening. Whitehead’s body is held tensely on his other side, his eyes closed but Harry thinks he’s awake. 

“We can’t stay here,” Harry agrees. There’s still a twinge of unease at having to be the one in charge. 

He tries to think of what Ben would do but it just reminds of how he’s gone. Of holding his neck under the palms of his hands and having to let go. The wretched gurgling of his last breaths. 

“We could swim,” Whitehead suggests, his voice hoarse. He hasn’t spoken since they’ve gotten into the building. 

Harry turns to look at him. He hasn’t even opened his eyes, his head tipped into the damp wall. Harry knows he’s working through the shock still. He hopes he’ll snap out of it, Harry’s seen what it can do to people. 

“It’s too choppy,” Harry says uneasily. “We’d never get Tom over.”

As if to punctuate his statement, Tom’s shoulder jerks. Silence drags on for a few beats, Rylance looking up at him. Harry feels his face harden. “We’re not leaving him behind.”

“We need the boat,” Rylance murmurs, his cheek twitching. He’s still sitting by the door, his helmet in his hands. He looks resigned. Tired. “We should try and find it. They might not notice.”

Harry stares at him. One of them could go out and have a look. If there’s no troops about, they could make it to the river without the cover of darkness. 

It’s a death wish. 

But they're desperate enough that it’s their only hope.

Rylance meets his eye, blinks slowly. He looks calm, his eyes wrinkling a little as he squints across the room. At Harry's hip, Tom makes a noise, his head rolling back as he takes in a ragged breath. 

“I’ll go.”

Harry’s neck aches with how fast his head jerks up. He’d gone back to staring at Tom in the quiet. 

“Rylance,” Harry says. “Mark.”

Rylance nods, his mouth turning up into a tired smile. “Someone has to do it. Someone has to try. We can’t just sit here and wait for a rescue that’s not coming. We have to do something ourselves.”

Harry opens his mouth to disagree. To say that he should go instead. Harry’s the lead command, after all. It should be him… right?

But Harry doesn’t say anything, his stomach sinking with cowardice. He thinks of going out there on his own and he balks, his stomach turning over. He can feel everyone staring at him, Whitehead’s gaze boring into the side of his face. 

Harry opens his mouth. Closes it again. His tongue peel away from the roof of his mouth but he can't speak. 

The silence drags on too long. Tom breathes harshly in Harry's lap and Rylance looks vaguely disappointed. Harry can't meet his eye. 

“Chin up, lad,” Mark says, kneeling forward to clap Whitehead on the shoulder. He nearly looks paternal. “I’ll be back soon.”

“Are you -- what about --” Whitehead stammers. He’s gone pale, a sort of ashy grey colour that makes him look just as ill as Tom. 

Rylance nods at him, fixing a smile onto his face. It seems too forced. “You sit tight and I’ll be back, okay?”

Whitehead nods quickly, his shoulder jerking before he slides back into his corner. 

Rylance glances over at Harry and there’s a moment where Harry just stares at him, stares at his expression which is a mix of disappointment and fear. Resignation. 

Harry feels his throat grow tight. “Good luck,” he chokes, his fingers curling in the dirty material of his coat draped over Tom’s shoulders. It’s too warm, a flush working up over Harry’s face. This is the last time he’ll see him. He’s sending him out to his death. 

Harry can’t speak. Hunger and emptiness roiling in his belly. Rylance nods, his eyes sliding closed for a moment. Harry watches as he takes a breath -- says a prayer maybe -- before he slips out the wooden door and he’s gone. 

*

“Hey,” Harry says, his voice rough. “What’s your name.”

They’ve been silent for a while. Harry doesn’t know the time of the day, the sun sliding through the little square box on the opposite wall. It feels late though, ebbing as it slides behind clouds, maybe it’s setting. 

They’ve gone through all the water. The last square of biscuit split between three. The air filtering in through the gap in the bricks does little to take away from the stench in the corner where they’ve been relieving themselves. 

The absence of Rylance weighs heavily on Harry. He has no idea how long he’s been gone or if he's even made it. If his death was swift. Harry drifts uneasily into sleep every so often, jerking awake when his mind plays images of Rylance lying on the riverbank like Ben. He startles awake, Tom shuddering against him or kicking Whitehead with his foot. 

Whitehead glances up, surprise registering on his face. He looks bone-tired, his eyes hanging out of his head. Whitehead takes a moment before answering. Harry doesn’t mind. It’s not as if there’s any rush. “Whitehead, sir.”

Harry stares at him for any hint of humour. Whitehead just looks a little blankly back. “Your first name. ‘M Harry.”

Whitehead blinks again and Harry wonders if he does this all the time or if he’s still working through some shock. Tom shifts slightly, his shoulders jerking up. Harry pats at his arm, his fingers moving up to smooth gently over his collar and up his neck. 

“Never had a chance to get to know you,” Harry keeps on. The silence in the room is starting to get to him. Harry waves his free hand around in front of him and keeps his other pressed to Tom’s cheek. He feels too warm. “Before this,” Harry says, his voice dropping slightly at the hypocrisy of it all. He shrugs. "Either of you." 

Whitehead snorts but draws a knee up in front of his chest defensively. “Is there even any point?”

He says it so harshly that Harry looks up in surprise. Whitehead seems to realise his mistake and he blinks again. And again, his shoulders falling, before he opens his mouth. 

“Sorry,” he mutters. "Sir." 

Harry sighs. There's no need for formality anymore. “It’s Harry.”

Tom’s eyelashes flutter. He hopes he’ll pull through but he’s burning through the thick coats of their uniform, sweat gathered on his hairline. Harry runs his finger through his fringe where his hair has grown long and it feels sticky.

“Fionn.”

Harry drags his eyes away from the side of Tom’s face. “Pardon?”

Fionn winces, his eyes shuttering before they blink open again. “My name is Fionn.”

Harry smiles. If he closes his eyes he could nearly see the worn golden edges of Niall’s book. It sits on the shelf in the living room beside Harry’s battered Ulysses and the entire works of Virginia Woolf. Taylor likes Jane Austen and Kipling and Fitzgerald when he doesn’t remind her of home. Niall liked reading the horses and making money on a Saturday when Harry and Taylor lay in to read for an hour or two under their warm covers. He’d come home and take them for a drink if he won, a few rolled up notes going into the vase that sat on the mantelpiece. He’d roll home a sorry mess late evening if he didn’t get so lucky, stinking of gin and cigarettes. 

“Like Fionn mac Cumhaill.”

Fionn’s jaw drops open. Something crumbles away in his expression and he meets Harry’s eyes properly. “Actually. Yes. You know of him?”

Harry grins. “Yes, I’ve heard all about him. My --” he hesitates, biting down on his lip. “A friend. He’s Irish. Liked to talk about him once he’d have a few pints in him.”

Fionn smiles, his mouth turning up. “The great _warrior_.” Fionn waves his hand grandly in front of him as if he’s wielding a sword. “My mum really liked the idea of it.” 

Harry grins. Fionn and Niall would get on well. Or, he’d get on well with Fionn’s mum at any rate. 

Fionn’s face falls slightly. “It was after the Great War. Thought it would make me strong. Dad said there’d never be another one.” Fionn breaks off to laugh mirthlessly. “What did he know, eh?”

Harry frowns. His family had lost in the last war but Harry hadn’t known anything different, growing up ignorant of the possibility of another war. His mum would grow quiet if they ever brought it up, her face soft and resigned. She’d smile into a teacup or run a finger over the picture frame. Harry had caught her wearing an only large coat down in the kitchen one night. Gemma stopped asking after a while, her memories of their father faded but lingering.

Harry couldn’t miss a man he didn’t know. 

“What about your friend? I’m sure he wasn’t silly enough to sign up to this lark?”

“He’s in Eritrea now. At least, I think he is,” Harry answers, glancing down at Tom’s blond hair. He swallows down the bitterness that they’re separated. He should’ve let Niall stay at home. Never should’ve let him sign up in the first place. “He was with me in Dunkirk.”

Fionn turns his face away, a frown rippling across his forehead. Harry doesn’t need to ask him about Dunkirk, he can see the ghost of it on Fionn's shoulders. 

“It’s --” Harry mutters, stroking his fingertips across the greasy ends of Tom’s hair. He pulls Tom further onto his lap, lifts his head and shoulders off the cold concrete. His body is too light, too skinny. Heat thrums under Harry’s palms. “It’s harder not to know.”

Fionn hums tunelessly. “No news is good news. Isn’t that what they say?”

Harry feels hollow, not comforted at all. The rain starts again outside, the lash of it loud on the roof. Fionn shifts out of the range of the drips, the plink of them falling steadily. 

“Catch it,” Harry tells him, finally coming out of his stupor. It’s the first thing he’s said with real conviction. An order. Fionn scrambles with his helmet, the tin sounding off the concrete as he tries to catch the water. 

He looks proud of himself as he sinks back into the corner, the water gathering in the rounded bottom of his helmet. It makes him look brighter, something finally igniting in his eyes. 

Tom shifts at his hip again, Harry presses his palm to his forehead. Harry wonders if Tom has ever been in love. He’s awfully young. They all are.

He asks Fionn instead because Tom can’t answer. 

Fionn looks sheepish for a moment. “Never even kissed anyone.”

Harry swallows, feeling a swell of pity for him. It seems so cruel. 

“You’ll be a catch when you get home,” Harry tells him, the words feeling awkward in his mouth. He’s not really sure what to say. He’s not in that position, he’s gotten everything he’s ever wanted in Taylor and Niall. 

Fionn snorts self-deprecatingly. “Not sure that’ll happen.”

Harry doesn’t ask if he means whether he’ll make it back at all. They’re quiet for a few moments before Fionn laughs to himself again. 

“Not even sure I want a lass,” he says quietly. “Never really saw the appeal. Reckon there’s something wrong with me.”

Harry looks up at him. Fionn’s cheeks have pinked up and he’s staring at the wall over Harry’s shoulder instead of looking at him in the eye.

Harry licks his lips, unsure of what to say. His stomach twists. He could be interpreting Fionn completely wrong but Fionn’s eyes stray over to gauge Harry’s expression before they snap nervously away again and Harry knows that he’s right. 

“I -- uh, I didn’t mean that-- I mean--” Fionn hurries to correct himself.

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you,” Harry says, carefully. 

Fionn stares at him, his eyes widening slightly. He still looks filthy and too grey, his eyes sunken into his thin face and shadowed with dark blue down to his cheeks. 

“I think there’s nothing wrong with wanting something --” Harry pauses, licks his lips again. --“different.”

He’s only really had to say this out loud twice. A quiet confession under the bedcovers one night to Taylor, his heart in his throat and once back at home, when he didn’t know what was going on in his head. 

Jack had brushed his hair away from his forehead, called him a troubled soul and kissed him there in the middle of the shed. His hands were green from the weeding and for the rest of the summer, Harry couldn’t smell freshly cut grass without popping a hard on. 

They’d kept it a secret -- obviously -- Harry sneaking away from the house in the afternoons to meet up with Jack after he was done helping his father. He was home for the summer, his hair growing lighter in the sun. Harry used to watch from the house as he walked wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of gravel and soil and all sorts from one corner of the garden to the other. 

He’d be nearly bursting out of his shirt, his arms thick under the cotton. He was a little older than Harry, the beginnings of a beard growing in under his chin. He seemed so knowledgeable, books from the library lined up on his windowsill and his smile easy when Harry wanted to talk about how Oscar Wilde made his heart race. He let Harry watch him, smirked under long gratuitous glances in the driveway when no one was looking. 

Now, Harry knows that he knew very little after all. They’d fumbled together in the shed amongst all the rakes and shovels, dank with oil and damp. When his mother took Gemma out to town, he’d take Jack into the drawing room and they’d wolf down thick sandwiches listening to the Victrola before they could get their hands on each other.

Harry learnt what it felt like to have another man’s hand on him, learnt about all the things his body could do when he’d been taught it shouldn’t. 

It was pure infatuation. Excitement and exhilaration.

It had been rough and sore. It had been too inexperienced. 

Harry gave him a copy of _Orlando_ for his birthday, Gemma watching suspiciously on. She’d try and set him up with all sorts of girls from her social circle, cousins of friends and sisters of people she met at dances. 

Jack started courting a pretty girl from the village.

Harry had to sack his father. 

They never spoke again. 

Now, Harry knows how different it can be. How it can be more than just pure desperation and feeling guilty after fucking. He knows what it feels like to be loved. 

“You don’t?” Fionn asks, cautiously. 

Harry looks at him again, sees how nervous he is. Harry shakes his head and Fionn looks relieved for a moment, his shoulders sinking back into the wall. There’s still a bit of hesitation there, a little bit of confusion and Harry takes pity. 

“You just have to be careful,” Harry mumbles and Fionn’s eyes dart away again. 

It feels strange to be talking about this, to be discussing it with someone else. Someone outside his relationship. 

He’s never really had to with Niall, both of them already on the same page and working everything in between out themselves. 

“Have you --” Fionn trails off, his face going pink again. He looks awkward, like he’s still a teenager curled in the corner. 

Harry looks down at Tom again, his face evened out in sleep. 

“Yeah, uh, both, actually.”

Fionn looks away, swallows. 

Harry gives him a moment, feeling a little embarrassed himself. He sounds greedy when he says it like that. If anyone gets wind of what he’s up to, all three of them would be in trouble. 

He’d been worried when things went sour between him and Jack, that he’d tell someone. That he’d tell Mr Lowden as some sort of revenge for Harry letting him go. Harry had been terrified for a few weeks after, shutting himself up in the house as the Lowden’s packed up their cottage at the end of the lane. 

In the end, he’d went down to them against his mother’s wishes, told them they could stay in the house. 

Mr Lowden had thanked him, not quite meeting his eye. Jack had stood behind him in the doorway, his shirt unbuttoned and stony faced. 

Harry remembers apologising, his voice breaking with how desperate he was for them to believe him. How desperate he was to have everything smoothed over so Jack wouldn’t tell on him. 

It had been the final encouragement to try and go to London. 

“I don’t think I’d want that,” Fionn says, his voice quiet and small. He’s looking at his hands, one knee pulled up in front of him. Looks like he’s trying to burrow himself tight into the corner. 

“Want what?” Harry asks, stomach lurching. “Both?”

Fionn shakes his head. “To be careful. To always be looking over your shoulder. Having to pretend to be something you’re not.”

Harry swallows, a little shocked. Harry’s not known anything different. He’s used to censoring himself in public, of holding Taylor’s hand and not Niall’s. They both work hard to make it believable because that’s just the way they have to be. 

He doesn’t let himself think whimsical fantasies of having a time where he’d be able to tell everyone he has a _boy_ friend.

Fionn’s face creases in confusion, as if he doesn’t even know what he wants himself. He shakes his head, shrugs. “Nothing will ever come of it. It doesn’t even matter.”

Harry sighs, unsure of what to say. Fionn sounds angry. Defeated. 

They’re quiet for a few moments, the rain slowly dripping to a stop. Harry reaches for the helmet, his thumb at Tom’s bottom lip to help him drink. 

Fionn takes his share and more. 

Harry lets him.

*

In the morning, Tom doesn’t wake up. 

He’s curled stiff beside Harry, his face pale and grey. 

His teeth are pink with blood and his leg is festering. 

Harry can’t move, his own muscles locked down. Just as stiff as Tom is dead in front of him. 

Fionn’s hand clamps around Harry’s shoulder as he pulls him away. “He’ll be catching.”

He says it with disgust, his nose turned up. Harry propels himself up, his fist connecting with Fionn’s face. 

“Oi!” Fionn yells, staggering back. Harry pulls at Fionn’s jacket to keep himself from falling, his feet like jelly below him. Fionn shoves him off and Harry stumbles into the wall to keep himself from falling over Tom’s sprawled legs. 

He shakes out his hand, glancing up to see Fionn’s fingers cupped around his cheek. 

“I didn’t fucking kill him,” Fionn shouts and Harry shushes him, distractedly. They’re making too much noise. Harry tries to steady himself, his head swimming. It’s disorientating being in such an enclosed space. It feels like there isn’t enough air -- the clammy heat thick between Harry and Fionn, between Tom and the doorway. 

Fionn growls and steps away from him, one hand out in front as if to stop Harry coming at him again. Harry turns and tries to put some space between them. 

It’s so small that he can see Tom from anywhere he looks, a limp foot from the corner of his eye, the slump of a body in front of him. 

When Harry blinks, it’s Niall there limp on the concrete. 

Harry gasps and turns his head against the cold cement wall. It’s damp, a lingering stickiness against his cheek. 

The first explosion makes the walls shake. Harry stumbles up, Fionn meeting him in the middle of the room. 

“They know we’re here,” Harry barks at him, his fingers curling in the lapels of Fionn’s jacket. Fionn nods, his eyes wide. His face is red, already starting to swell. 

Harry doesn’t have time to feel sorry. He turns, looks down at Tom’s rigid body. 

“We can’t take him,” Fionn says, reading Harry’s mind perfectly. 

Harry looks up at him, imploringly. “We can’t _leave_ him.”

The sound of rapid gunfire drills holes in Harry’s head. It batters off the brick outside, whizzes past the tiny window. They’re getting closer, they’re caught. 

“We have to go,” Fionn says, his hand coming down to cup around the back of Harry’s neck. Harry lets himself be pulled forward until their dirty foreheads are touching. He can feel the sweat gathering there. “We have to, Harry. Come on.”

Harry nods, his brow nudging against Fionn’s. 

They cover Tom with a coat. Harry takes his time tucking it in under his back, over his shoulder. He stows him in the corner like he’s a bit of old luggage, something they’ll not need for a while. It makes him sick, stepping away to retch onto the floor just by Tom’s feet. It bends him over, his hand pressing down on the decaying floorboards. Nothing comes up, his throat aching. 

Fionn takes over then, pushing his feet together and hiding his head underneath a spare helmet. They stand for a moment, the world seemingly going still. Harry stares at the covered up body, turns away when his chest gets too tight. 

Another letter to write home. Harry didn’t even know that much about him. He’d been so young -- so new. Barely enough time to do anything with himself out here.

“Hurry,” Harry says, realising how loud the gunfire is getting. How rapid. His voice is nearly gone, a mere croak.

They slide out of the door and stay pressed to the brickwork. Harry’s heart is in his throat as they shuffle along, his fingers feeling out the grout and uneven edges. It’s not properly bright yet, that lingering moment before the sun comes up properly. A broken dawn. 

It’s eerily quiet. Except for the odd whizz of a stray bullet. It’s a faint buzz and then a thwack of metal impaling itself into frosted topsoil, the splinter of a wooden awning, the plink against a slate roof. 

Harry presses his fingers deeper against the rough of the wall. Feels across until he can grip at Fionn’s wrist. His hand is clammy, sticky. 

He feels exposed with no weapon. His coat is back in the hut, his helmet. He’s got no bag, just the swollen pages in his inside pocket, ran of ink and sundry. 

Rain soaks into the back of his shirt, Fionn’s trousers paperbag around his waist with how tight his belt is. 

Harry wonders how easy they are to spot against the grey wall. Their grey faces, barely there. Their eyes wide like targets. 

They press forward, heads ducked. Harry steps in Fionn’s footprints, their boots squelching in the ground as it gets softer near the river. 

A bullet kicks up a clod of muck to the right. A bird ruffles its wings and takes flight up ahead. 

The river looms, the path fading into a worn trail over grass, through brambles that have been half cleared away, a hanging tree. 

Harry splashes right into the river. It’s swollen with the rainfall, running fast. It takes his breath away, water up to his chin. 

Behind them, more gunfire. 

Harry can hardly hear it over the rush of the river, the roar of blood in his ears. He looks over his shoulder for --

Fionn stares at him, his face a picture of painful anguish. “I can’t --”

“ _Fionn!_ Harry says, his feet sliding in the riverbed. It’s too soft. Fionn stands a few feet high above him. “You have to!”

“It’s-- water--” Fionn stammers, his eyes wide and bright in his dirty face. Harry reaches up for him, his hand in the air. They don’t have all that much time left and Harry already feels breathless, his other hand twisting in short grass at the side to keep him from being dragged under with the current. 

“Whitehead,” Harry tries, wondering if it’ll make him snap out of it. 

Fionn’s face twists, his mouth dropping open as he gasps on a breath. He looks like he’s about to cry out, his fingers bloody and dirty twisting in the front of his shirt.

“Fionn!” Harry barks, throwing himself up against the current and reaching for him. He grabs the knee of his trousers, yanking him forward until he’s a step closer to the edge of the river. 

Harry thinks he’s done it, Fionn tipping forward with a small cry of exhilaration. Harry’s heart leaps, relief flooding through him that they can finally get out of there. 

It’s nearly graceful. Fionn’s arm spreading wide, his body arching towards the water. His legs sprawl awkwardly though, throwing him off balance. 

He thrashes when he hits the water, arms and legs everywhere. 

“Fionn, Fionn,” Harry cries desperately. Water kicks up between them and Harry lets go of the grass, his fingers sinking into the mud for a moment before he launches himself the few feet towards him. 

He grabs Fionn by the shoulder, wedges a hand under his armpit. “Fionn, calm down. I’ve got you -- Fionn--”

Fionn’s face is a picture of terror. His mouth gaping open as he struggles, water spilling out over his chin, up his nose, in his eyes. His hair is sopping. 

He looks at Harry without seeing, his eyes wild and huge. Harry’s never seen someone’s eyes like that -- bulging, bloodshot, ballooned. 

Blood floods out into the dirty river water. Harry can hardly see the colour of it but he feels the warmth, the ooze of it from under Fionn’s arm, in that warm spot tight to his body. It clings to Harry’s fingers like oil, floating out over the surface of the water. Harry gasps, water and blood and whatever else flooding across his tongue. 

He coughs, kicks his legs to keep himself afloat. His boot collides with Fionn’s knee, no longer thrashing under the water. Fionn’s body sinks, his neck gone limp. 

Bullets plink the water like stones on a still lake. Harry sinks below the water. Caught in the current, Fionn drifts away from him.

Water floods into his ears, his heartbeat echoing inside his brain. The rush of blood. Adrenaline. 

He holds his breath, his chest aching already. 

Last time they did this, Niall was there to pull him along, to push him up onto a boat, to keep him kicking his legs. 

Fionn didn’t have that person there but he still managed. Managed to get into a boat. To safety. To get to the otherside. 

To get put right back into France again to die in the water there anyway. 

Harry’s face breaks the surface and he gasps for air, the legs of his trousers soaked and heavy, a dead weight below him. He sinks again, stops kicking. A boot comes free and his leg floats up, lighter than he’s felt in days. It makes his stomach swoop, his body twisting in the water. 

Harry opens his eyes, sees nothing against the sting. 

It feels like an age before he bobs up again, frigid air hitting his skin. His head breaks the surface first, disorientating in how his body twists below it. Water clings to his eyelashes, his hair. His lips taste like copper, ash, earth. 

He opens his eyes, sees a flash of blue sky, of grey-green trees, mud and decay. 

The bullets have stopped. 

Harry takes a breath, water at the back of his throat and slowly tips back. 

*

Niall would like the lake, Harry thinks. 

He’d bomb off the edge, try to find the absolute middle. His trousers would hang from a tree, the cuff dangling just about touching the water so one leg would be soaked up to the knee. 

He’d go starkers if Gemma wasn’t there, his bare arse popping up every time he dove down to touch the bottom. 

It would be July. Or August. 

It would be before. 

There wouldn’t be any wariness about water. No held breaths or clenched fists. No panicked, bulging eyes. 

This Niall. This Niall’d be free from war. He’d never have to endure the first attempt at trenches, the retreat, the great scramble under the ocean. He’d never be half way across the world from Harry, his mouth tasting of sand and rot and regret.

Unburdened, he’d blush when Taylor emerged from the water, her white underthings nearly see-through. Harry liked it when he used to blush, his eyes darting about their bedroom those first few times Harry had tugged him into their bed. Before it became his bed too. Those quiet hesitations that were followed by bashful laughter, bitten lips, tiny gasps that couldn’t be held in. 

Maybe he’d let his hand linger on Harry’s back, his ankle knocking his under the water, they’d wrestle in the shallows just for an excuse to touch each other, to feel the slip and slide of their bodies against each other, the sun warming their slick backs. 

They’d walk back to the house hand in hand, sheltered by the empty fields sprawling on either side. 

They’d dawdle. Dander. Just the three of them on the lane that afternoon. 

Niall would laugh. Weightless. His head tipped back, chin raised so Harry can see the line of his throat. The jump of his pulse. The movement of his breath. 

Harry squints, Niall’s face obscured by the hot evening sun. He can hardly see his face at all.


End file.
